Sunday, March 27, 2011

Retreat aftermath slothiness

....and I'm back from the scrapbook retreat!  I have to admit that I am always super duper exhausted after a retreat!!!  Jan and I always stay up really late and try and wake up before 8.  Last night I was so tired that I could barely keep my peeps open so I started knitting, which, oddly was easier for me to do, no thinking involved just knit and purl.  Friday night we stayed up until at least 2am, and we were up by 7 at least.  I thought for sure I'd need to take a nap, but nope.  I think last night we pooped at like midnight?   eh.  I did get 24 pages done though!  Yes!  success.  I was a little worried after not scrapbooking for so long that I wouldn't be able to come up with anything.  Today might turn out to be the laziest day ever.  I may or may not read a book, watch a movie, or take a nap......we'll just see.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

purple binding finish

folded quilt
And so, the quilt is finito! For the binding I got super lucky that I had this purple floral in my stash. It's from a few years ago, leftover scraps from a scrub top that I made! I had just enough scraps to eke out the binding, phew! and good thing too because my purple fabrics were just all wrong...not enough of this, that one was too light, blah blah. You know how it is :)
So, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this rug since I first saw it!!!!  I've been thinking maybe, just maybe I'll have to learn how to make granny squares and make my own.  I have lots of bright colors in my stash and it would be fun to have a colorful rug under my sewing machine!
Another thing I was thinking this morning about is that I don't think I read quite enough.  I've got stacks of books that I just haven't had any interest in reading.  But also don't want to get rid of them till I've read em.  So I thought maybe I need to make myself read them and that way I can get rid of them in Jan's yard sale this Summer (if she has one).

Saturday, March 19, 2011

a baby quilt

So, what's new this week???  Not much here, unless you count almost another quilt finish!  It's all quilted and ready for binding.  So.  I have to say that the stippling went much, much better this time!  For one thing, the fabrics I'm using are all 100% cotton.  I do have to admit that I'm surprised at how poufy the quilting turned out though.  And, alas - even though I pinned and repinned super tightly the back still got puckers!  BAH!  I think I'm still going to go with it though, even though it is going to be a gift......or should I not???
baby quilt
here's the front, I didn't take a picture of the back.  I'm not done yet, but she knows I'm making it for her so I feel like it's okay to put a picture up?  Sorry if I ruin any sort of surprise!  Anyways, she said she is going to do purple, teal and brown for her baby's room.  I found a pattern that I liked (and looked easy) in an old Fons and Porter magazine,100_2631[1]
100_2633[1]
  I made the squares an inch smaller and did my own thing for the borders, I did take the idea for the flying geese set in the outer border.  I have been wanting to try flying geese for awhile now!  As per norm, everything is from my stash (thanks Mom!) and all I had to buy was thread.  I might have to buy some purple to do the binding because I don't know if I have anything suitable.  We'll see.
It snowed last night and was snowing this morning a little bit.  Everyone keeps getting all upset that it is Mid-March and still snowing, but frankly I'm getting used to it!  Every year it stays cold until like June, so I'm not going to expect Spring until then.  I am kind of excited that my tulips and daffodils have poked up though!  And, it's snowed and frozen twice since they did and they still keep getting bigger so I think they are going to survive.
Next weekend is the Spring scrapbooking retreat!  I'm very much looking forward to it!  I have been sewing and quilting so much that it will be interesting to see what I come up with for scrapbooking!  I think I might work on Florida pictures so I can imagine what it would be like to be warm again!

Saturday, March 12, 2011

vintage sheet bar quilt donezo

So I finished the quilt last night!  Yesss!  I burned dinner again, but I really wanted to be DONE.  And now I am :)  First up is a pic of me trying to hold it up, not quite tall enough for it not to drag on the ground.  I estimate that it is right about twin sized.
finished quilt
And here it is on the ground:
front view
Here's the back view:
back of quilt
the back is a full on Monet, and I'm glad you can't see all the snarls and imperfections in the picture! Holy cow. You can kind of see how the back sheet is puckery, I didn't notice that it had gotten some puckers until I had quilted too much to rip out. I was more concerned with the tension that was messing up! The tension seemed to calm down a little bit better for the border, but there were a couple times I was ready to kill my machine. Here's a close up of the border:
folded quilt
I was debating yesterday what kind of fabric to use for the binding and I was right about to go with regular fabric instead of vintage sheet, but changed my mind at the last second. This blue print is one of the first vintage sheets I ever bought! It's a fitted sheet, so I have a lot of it since those are not my favorite to work with. I machine sewed the whole binding instead of hand sewing the back part. I don't like the way the hand stitching kind of looks twisted and puckery (to me). But, I don't like the way the machine stitching shows on the back, eh. It's a trade-off I suppose.
So, all in all a vintage sheet quilt success! I used VS for everything except the pink solid border. The white parts are even VS, it was a full sized 100% cotton that had a printed top border.  And, the only thing I had to buy was cotton quilting thread!  Bonus.  Everything including the batting was already in my stash.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Florida musical dream

Thought I'd share another of my silly dreams.This morning-ish I dreamt that I was in a musical in Florida.  The premise of the musical was about this group of people vacationing from San Francisco and the group was so impressed with the warmth and tropicalness of Florida.  So, at first we were unpacking our clothes and then we all convened outside in a beautiful courtyard surrounded with lush green tropical plants and trees.  Cue dancing and singing along the courtyard down a walkway towards a beautiful house.  And the song was something like *glorious song voice* San-Fran-cisco! Dreary, foggy, overcast - COLD!!!!  and here we are in *Flor-ida!!!!  Warm, beautiful, sunny, tropical.  In the dream it all made sense and flowed in a fabulous song and we were all dancing around in a show-tunsey kind of way. 

I woke up super tired, but also really wanting to be in Florida in warmth and sunshine......grin :)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

I don't have a pic for this post, but I wanted to share anyways.  I have stippled the quilt!  Oh man.  Seriously I am such a wimp!!!!  My hands are sore and my ankle and foot from holding the foot down at a certain speed allll day long yesterday!  I did buy some of those gloves with the grippies on them, I think they helped a LOT, but my hands still felt crampy by the end of the day.  I finished it up today, still need to think of what I want to do with the borders (pink part).  I have to say that my machine realllly doesn't like to quilt.  The tension acted up all day yesterday and then in one area the thread kept breaking off.  I used the cotton thread and a good needle so I think it just was the fabric?  At one point I almost gave up, partly the tension was driving me bananas, then I thought maybe I'd adjust the bobbin screw tension thing and lost the teeeny tiny bobbin screw.  Never found it either, it's somewhere on my floor in the carpet!  grrr.  Luckily I had my old machine (super old yellow metal Brother machine) in the closet and I took it out thinking maybe I'd switch to that machine and just straight quilt.  Then a light went on and I took the bobbin thing out and the screws matched!  Yesss, back in business.  After that it went okay.  There are tons of snarls that I'm working on, but all in all not a total loss.

Friday, March 4, 2011

bordered

So here's what I have so far.  I added the borders this morning.  I was going to use green, but it didn't quite look right.  I used this same pink with the table runner and I liked the way it looked so I thought it might look good with the quilt.  I haven't picked what I'll use for the binding.